Curb Your Enthusiasm: "The Table Read" Review

The last few weeks of Curb have had their moments, but the show hasn't really hit it out of the park since "Denise Handicapped." However, "The Table Read" was a fantastic episode, that ranks among Curb's best.

The Seinfeld reunion was in full swing, and as the title implied, it was time for the table read – and more, actually, as the episode took us well into the rehearsal process as well. This allowed us not only to see the whole Seinfeld cast together again, but also several actors who had notable recurring roles on the series, including Steve Hytner ("Kenny Bania"), Wayne Knight ("Newman") and Estelle Harris ("Estelle Costanza"). I don't know if the material we saw from the Seinfeld reunion sounded particularly great, but there's no denying how fun it was to see the cast back together, on the familiar set. And there were some nicely observed little moments, like seeing Jerry breaking while rehearsing a scene with Knight, and how amused Julia Louis-Dreyfus was watching them.

What really got the ball rolling on the true Curb material though was when Larry was introduced to a little girl, whose mother nonchalantly said her daughter had "a rash on her p**sy." Now, let's be honest – the second Larry got a text from that girl, we all could guess where this was going. It wasn't hard to realize that sooner or later, Larry was going to look like a child molester. But man, it sure didn't stop it from being funny either.

I do have to say that it was pretty out of character for Larry to just begin referring to the little girl's "p**sy" too, after her mom said it – we even saw Larry's baffled face when he first heard the mom. His character should know better than to think he could just say that term around other people and it wouldn't get a reaction. But again, funny is funny, and getting to see Jerry Seinfeld of all people have that expression of shock and disgust on his face was pretty damn hysterical. And the fact that the episode ended with a doctor calling the police to report Larry was perfect. Look, the comic misunderstanding thing has been done a million times (It was Three's Company's bread and butter), but how many other shows would dare have the misunderstanding be about this topic and using this language?

Meanwhile, we discovered Michael Richards had Groats' Syndrome, which was a really fun callback within the Curb universe – as this was the same, terrible (and fictional) illness that Rob Reiner once asked Larry to help fundraise for. This led to another extremely funny sequence, in which Larry – wanting to pull Michael out of his funk in order to give a better performance – had Leon pose as a Groats' survivor he knew, after finding out that the real guy had – wait for it – died from Groats' Syndrome!

It's interesting, because this was another storyline that felt a bit more contrived than some we've seen on the show, with the whole, "pretend to be someone else!" thing. Yet once again, I found myself very forgiving due to how damn funny it was. The sight of Leon concocting one ridiculous symptom after another made for a great scene and even better was that he had to claim to have been adopted by a Jewish family, and talked about "recharging the mitzvah", after he said he'd had three Bar Mitzvahs so far.

We've all wondered if and how Curb would deal with Michael Richards' very public meltdown a few years back, and we got our answer here. What was particularly clever was first we saw Michael's reaction to Leon showing up at his door, as he freaked out, thinking it was a retaliation. At the time, this seemed to be the show getting a quick joke about that incident out of the way and moving on. That made it even funnier when Michael found out Leon was a fake, and ran up to him ranting and raving, as a group of fans began videotaping him. - and we realize oh no, they weren't going to let Richards off so lightly. The line, "If only there was a name that I could call you that would make you as angry as I am now!" was especially hysterical and dangerously pointed.

I almost forgot to mention Larry's distaste over Jason Alexander borrowing his pen and then putting it in his mouth and ear. It was ultimately a minor part of a busy episode, but also had some strong moments, including a great line from Jerry about how Jason will "insert" things you give him. Oh, and how about Jerry taking a liking to Funkhouser, after Larry tries to get Funkhouser kicked off the set? Or the fact that most of the Seinfeld cast is clearly pretty suspicious of Cheryl getting a part on the reunion, with no notable credits to speak of.